There are plenty of everyday problems we have to overcome. From people not getting their fix to clients making changes and budgets being overrun to little things going wrong, it’s often our ability to adapt to change that helps us persevere.
That’s true, in nearly all instances, except when you’re injured. Not hurt, but injured. Being hurt in the athletic sense can mean you’re tired, in the business sense can mean you’re overloaded, but neither compare to the pain and the risk of continuing while you’re injured.
When someone in a company screws up and releases a product that has flaws, you’ve been injured. When you’re running and thorn goes through your shoe and then foot, you’ve been injured. Too often we try to overcome these negative situations by trying harder. We push and pull and beg and plead and shove and grunt and finally we make it, only to realize we’ve caused massive damage.
Customers might be pissed off, blisters may have formed, suppliers may be out money and muscles may be strained, all because we were too proud, stupid and blind to stop what we were doing, fix the problem and continue on.
Stop. Fix the problem. Start again. You might lose a minute or two now, but you’ll gain hours in the long run.
